


peace so sweet|it tastes like death

by xwannaflyx



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, rambling nonlinear discussion of death, some suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22135912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xwannaflyx/pseuds/xwannaflyx
Summary: Discussions of death rarely go well among the Akatsuki. Of course, part of this is due to the fact that some of its members are obsessed with immortality while many of the others are obsessed with death as a nebulous concept. On the other hand, to be fair to the team, being an individual on the run from the higher powers with several run/kill on sight orders liberally scattered throughout the continent tends to make an individual rather introspective. There is never anything quite like looking at an abyss of your own making and knowing with unshakable almost desperate inevitability that it will one day look back.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23
Collections: Akatsuki Gift Exchange





	peace so sweet|it tastes like death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [uchihaleah](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=uchihaleah).



> for uchihaleah my giftee for akatsuki gift exchange
> 
> i am so, so sorry about how late (and dark) this got. work sort of punched me in the face and the ending of the decade combined into a strange introspective conversation with myself about death
> 
> despite it all, i hope you enjoy!

Obito knows death. He knows it like the raised scarred tissue of his face he traces over and over again trying to memorize the unnatural familiarity. He tasted death as the iron collected in his mouth and the salt of tears splashed onto his face. He still tastes death in his everyday with the lingering regret and anger that burns in his throat. H wonders if one day he’ll stop feeling death follow him like a phantom. He wonders if Kakashi feels the shadow of the death following his every footstep. (On the worse days, he wishes for it with steadfast viciousness. He hopes that Kakashi stares into the darkness with  _ their  _ eyes and tastes the bitter fear on his tongue. On better days, he remembers the flash of Rin’s smile and hopes desperately that death is a sweeter medicine than the taste that lingers on his tongue.)

“Death comes for us all,” Nagato says easily, the two of them broken puppets in pursuit of a world that has long since left them behind. “There is only so far one can run from an inevitability,” he adds. Obito doesn’t point out how Nagato says all this through the lips of a man long dead. Konan doesn’t say anything but her paper wings look particularly vicious on those days, their undersides hidden and the outer folds sharp as knives. 

Nagato is wizened and pale and gray. His ribs are hills protruding from the valleys of his flesh and his cheekbones are so sharp and his cheek so sunken. Obito wonders if he also looked like that when Madara first got his thrice cursed claws on him. Wonders if Madara’s now bitter promises sank through him and ate him inside out the way Nagato’s peace gnaws at his heels and nips at Konan’s wings. 

Looking at Nagato feels like looking at a future mirror of himself; feels like looking at the way hope in all its sweetness carves its way through your ribs and heart and feeds itself off your remains. But Obito knows he isn’t as strong as Nagato. Obito welcomed death once and he knows he would welcome again if he could just get far enough from Madara to touch that bitter peace. Far enough from his fanatically constructed plan to let go. 

Obito pursues death blindly. Death is the gentle touch of peace that he can almost reach. Death is the shine of Rin’s eyes and the promise that left Madara’s twisted lips. Death is what will finally allow him rest and Obito for all his posturing and Uchiha fire wishes to join his family in their strange peace. 

He’ll never understand the Akatsuki that pursue immortality Hidan with his sacrifices and death and fanatic prayers of pain leaves a bad taste on his tongue. Sasori in his creeping fear and careful encasing in wooden flesh weighs heavy. Orochimaru and his obsession, his dedication to stranger and stranger paths to avoid the fear that he refuses to face seems foolish and lost. Kakuzu and his multiple hearts looks hopeless in his hoarding of wealth to buy more time. They all seem to believe that this was it. This strange (cruel and empty) world is the most important to them. To live forever in all this bleakness, Obito thinks uncharitably, as phantom pains race through his crushed (no longer crushed but still lost) half, sounds like insanity. 

And Obito doesn’t want to understand Itachi. He doesn’t  _ want  _ to understand how anyone could willingly shed themselves of family to pursue a nothingness, a mere existence. Itachi sacrificed his entire clan (save for a single individual, a single beloved brother, and isn't strange how Uchiha Clan honor demands retribution from survivors) and Obito can’t figure out what he did it for. 

Sometimes, Obito remembers that the clan would demand revenge in their name but Obito was cast away long before he was a survivor and there is no family there. However, there is family in the way Itachi gazes in the distance, his black eyes watching and waiting. Obito knows that gaze, has seen it in the mirror as he waits for Kakashi, has seen it in reflections as he waits to die. (The only time Obito sees Itachi smile is when there is a hand through his chest and a brother in his gaze. The only time Obito sees Itachi at peace is when his eyes go and his life with it and a shriveled part of him deep inside is insanely jealous of the peace reflected in those black eyes.)

Obito, unlike many of the Akatsuki, doesn’t want his  _ death  _ to mean anything. Death is an end and something that was always coming. Death is simply an end and (he reminds himself constantly in the dark corners of their hideout) nothing to be pursued or desired. 

He wants his  _ life  _ to have meant something. He wants his life to be something given and not sacrificed, something that brought peace to children (like he was once) who no longer have to die in wars not of their making. He counts his life’s value in the few smiles he remembers glowing on Rin’s face. (He hoards the image of those in his heart as if they would make her final image any less poignant. On his weaker days he also holds close the image of Kakashi, not smiling, but relaxed in a way that was and is rare to see.) He weighs his life against the blood that’s been shed the burden of his sins. He tells himself over and over again that it will be worth it in the end, that it’ll balance his scales once he offers the world this peace. 

But he knows. He remembers the croaky danger of Madara and the Uchiha bright madness of his gaze. He knows because he feels that same madness rushing through his veins when he becomes angry, when he grows resentful. 

He knew and he knows and that’s why in the end the choice was a simple one. All those lives gone and all that pain caused and he makes the only choice he could live with. (The stains on his soul feel like they’ll never wash out, like the scales would never balance. But he remembers that his last  _ truly  _ good act remains with Kakashi to protect the last remainder of his small precious family and drawing breath despite his fatal wound is easy.) In the past it had been due to his lack of talent that he had died; now it is due to his sins. 

Death feels like falling into a deep sleep. (Getting stabbed through the stomach is a sharper and more localized pain than getting crushed; he thinks he prefers this to aching numbness of his first death.) But that last second of life, that final choice feels the closest to peace he had ever tasted. 


End file.
